en.Wedoany.com Reported - Samsung's subsidiary, Oxford Semantic Technologies (OST), has partnered with Ignite by Forvia Hella to develop a knowledge-based AI solution. This solution captures the driving status of autonomous vehicles in real-time and cross-validates it against traffic rules, aiming to clearly demonstrate to regulatory authorities how vehicles make decisions.
Oxford Semantic Technologies, originating from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, was acquired by Samsung in 2024. Ignite by Forvia Hella, a software subsidiary of automotive supplier Forvia Hella, was founded in 2024 and is headquartered in Berlin. The partners believe that the main obstacle preventing autonomous vehicle manufacturers from transitioning from Level 2 (partial driving automation, where the driver bears legal responsibility) to Level 3 (conditional driving automation, where the manufacturer bears responsibility) and Level 4 (full driving automation) is the inability to clearly explain the logic and process of vehicle decision-making. Unlike machine learning, which relies on vast datasets to find patterns, knowledge-based AI uses expert knowledge and logical reasoning to make explainable decisions.
This simulation-based software is built using OST's RDFox, and the partners claim it provides more accurate and reliable results than large language models. The solution captures vehicle driving status in real-time and cross-validates it against traffic rules, ensuring that every decision is logical, traceable, and compliant, thereby shortening development cycles and accelerating approval processes.
Dr. Felix Kortmann, Chief Technology Officer of Ignite by Forvia Hella, explained: "Hella Ignite.Drive applies knowledge-based AI to convert traffic regulations, originally written for human understanding, into machine-readable rule sets. This enables manufacturers to generate deterministic evidence proving that vehicle behavior is safe and compliant, meeting European type-approval requirements." Peter Crocker, CEO of OST, added: "Currently, autonomous vehicles use AI to make a series of decisions on the road—but manufacturers struggle to explain the reasons or methods behind these decisions. RDFox helps overcome this major barrier to progress. Knowledge-based AI allows us to collect and map these decisions and apply reasoning. We can precisely understand why a vehicle behaves in a certain way and use this data to help vehicles make better decisions in the future." Dr. Ian Horrocks, Professor at the University of Oxford and co-founder of OST, emphasized: "A key advantage of this technology is traceability—every decision can be traced back to the rules and logic that produced it."
